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Topic: Lossless mp3? (Read 3369 times) previous topic - next topic
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Lossless mp3?

Hello all,

I'm a Mac OS X and iTunes user. Whenever I can, I use AAC but would happily switch to Vorbis/FLAC would they be *really* supported (the iTunes plugin is far from perfect).

Basically, iTunes can only play two kind of tag-enabled audio files: mp3 and AAC (for other, like AIFF/WAVE, it will generate an external database, so I'm not interested).

Since I both want tags and lossless (for future convertion to Vorbis), I'd like to know if there's a way to create lossless mp3. Using iTunes exclusively right now, I don't know LAME well. I heard of an option called disable psychoacoustics. The way I understand mp3 compared to BZip, if I disable psychoacoustics, I would have a regular, zip-like archive.

Is there such an option? Would it achieve lossless encoding?

Thank you

P.S. : I found this thread before but it started to troll quite fast, plus it is a bit old now

Lossless mp3?

Reply #1 –
no that is not possible with mp3

Lossless mp3?

Reply #2 –
hmm... maybe not mp3.  IIRC, the mDCT transform used in mp3 (aac, vorbis, etc, etc) _is_ lossless before quantization, the mp3 analysis filterbank is slightly lossy.

this may be completely inaccurate (just stuff i read here and other places).

even if the filterbank were lossless (and it might just be), the mp3 psymodel would be useless and there'd be no gain from quanitzation, so the output would be as big, if not bigger than the original PCM data.

you could hassle the makers of iTunes to allow ape and flac support - these are lossless formats that support several tagging types.

Lossless mp3?

Reply #3 –
The closest you can get to lossless in mp3 is freeformat which will allow you to encode up to 640kbps lossy files, but the only available decoder for these is the MAD 0.14.2b plug-in for Winamp.

Lossless mp3?

Reply #4 –
Quote
The closest you can get to lossless in mp3 is freeformat which will allow you to encode up to 640kbps lossy files, but the only available decoder for these is the MAD 0.14.2b plug-in for Winamp.

...and even 640kbps freeformat MP3 still isn't very "lossless," as some samples (like Fatboy, IIRC) still aren't transparent at this bitrate, due to MP3's inherent design limitations. Not to mention that if you are aiming to be able to play these back in iTunes, forget about it... last I checked, iTunes can't decode freeformat streams.

If you really would like to use lossless in OS X for future transcoding, the best way I have found is to a.) download MacFlac to create FLAC files, and b.) download the now-discontinued, but nonetheless free, MacAmp Lite player and its FLAC plugin. I believe it may even support writing files to Vorbis, but I can't remember for sure. While you currently can't play the resulting FLAC's back in iTunes, a QT FLAC decoder might be in the works.

Lossless mp3?

Reply #5 –
>>freeformat which will allow you to encode up to 640kbps lossy files, but the only available decoder
All decoders from Fhg should decode freeeformat properly...
As far, as I know.

Lossless mp3?

Reply #6 –
Quote
All decoders from Fhg should decode freeeformat properly...
As far, as I know.


Theorically, they should (at least up to 320kbps). Practically, the situation is different.

Lossless mp3?

Reply #7 –
Quote
...and even 640kbps freeformat MP3 still isn't very "lossless," as some samples (like Fatboy, IIRC) still aren't transparent at this bitrate, due to MP3's inherent design limitations.

It used to be transparent to my ears. It's a long time since I've tried freeformat, mainly because so few decoders can decode it!

http://mp3decoders.mp3-tech.org/freeformat.html

As people have said, it's certainly not lossless. It can be "near" lossless, like the hybrid lossy/lossless codecs, but then, if that's what you want, why not use one of those instead? mp3 freeformat is almost useless due to the lack of decoder support.

Cheers,
David.

Lossless mp3?

Reply #8 –
Thank you all for your answers.

Quote
you could hassle the makers of iTunes


Hassle and Apple arre two mutually exclusive words :-( Apple doesn't care about its user's feedback (Safari being the sole exception)